Totalitarianism, Especially Its Intellectual and Social Roots
Last update: 01 Jan 2025 10:48First version: Before 4 April 2003, major expansion 18 June 2022
Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder
I realize that the validity of the concept of "totalitarianism" is disputed, but (with all due hesitation as a non-historian) I think those in favor of seeing these states as instances of a common type, which moreover was new to the 20th century, have much the stronger argument. Social taxonomy is always somewhat arbitrary, there will always be a tension between lumpers and splitters, and I can respect the splitter-ish impulse to insist on the importance of fine distinctions. But there is also an impulse towards refusing to concede that liberal critics of Communism had anything worthwhile to say, and this I respect much less.
So long as I am wading into disputes where I am utterly unqualified to have an opinion, I might as well say here that I think "fascism" is best used as the name of a specific set of political movements (and the states they sometimes ruled), which first coalesced in Europe in the early 20th century, especially after the First World War. These movements have descendants elsewhere and later, including up to the present day, but other movements have worked their way towards similar features independently. I think "fascism" is best reserved for that lineage, rather than as a general term for (say) radical right-wing politics; it's a historical formation rather than a recurring type. (In a biological analogy, "fascism" is more like "porpoise", a name for a form which has evolved once, with its own unique history, than it is like "streamlined neckless toothy marine predator", which has evolved multiple times, and embraces porpoises, sharks, ichtyosaurs, etc.) Part of fascism's unique historical evolution was that many of the influential early figures were ex-socialists, especially ex-Marxists, many of whom had been drawn to socialism and Marxism because they couldn't stand liberalism and/or bourgeois society. They carried this hatred and disgust with them into their new politics. (Sternhell is especially good on this point.) It is tempted to draw some analogies to our own time, and to some contemporary figures, and even to venture some prophecies, but I will try not to give in to that temptation any further than by making this very insinuation.
(In focusing my attention on "intellectual and social roots", rather than the actual history and effects of totalitarian states, I am of course indulging in a typical vice of intellectuals, viz., focusing on ideas and abstractions rather than realities. Someday I may write about why I think using morals to allocate attention is misguided; for now I will just say that I chose to take notes on what interests me, and nobody has to spend time on them.)
- See also:
- the Cold War
- Communism
- Counter-Enlightenment
- Empires and Imperialism
- the Left
- Nietzsche
- the Right
- Revolution
- Romanticism
- Socialism
- the Soviet Union
- Recommended:
- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism [Except that, as writers like Popper, Sternhell, Mazower, etc., etc., show, she was wrong in writing as though totalitarianism was something that crawled out from under the floorboards of European thought; it has a long and respectable pedigree, which included some of Arendt's own philosophy teachers.]
- Ian Kershaw
- The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich
- Hitler [Biography in 2 vols.]
- Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism
- Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience
- Kanan Makiya (as Samir al-Khalil), Republic of Fear
- Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century
- George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich
- Robert O. Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism
- Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914--1945
- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies [It's somewhat surprising that the three best books on this are all by philosophers, and very different ones at that.]
- Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology
- Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France [Awkward writing (at least in translation) but important]
- Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
- Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler
- Eugen Weber, Varieties of Fascism
- Richard Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism
- To read:
- Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter
- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922--1945
- Wolfgang Benz, A Concise History of the Third Reich
- Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams
- Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Too Close for Comfort: Right-Wing Populism, Scapegoating, and Fascist Potentials in US Political Traditions
- Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner, "The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry", The Journal of Economic History 66 (2006): 390--416
- Robert Burrowes, "Totalitarianism: The Revised Standard Version", World Politics 21 (1969): 272--294 [JSTOR]
- Daniel Chirot, Modern Tyrants: The Power and Prevalence of Evil in Our Age
- Daniel Ciepley, Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism
- Isaac Deutcher, Stalin
- Andrew Donson, "Why did German youth become fascists? Nationalist males born 1900 to 1908 in war and revolution", Social History 31 (2006): 337--358
- Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy
- Glaser, Cultural Roots of National Socialism
- Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity
- Michael Halberstam, Totalitarianism and the Modern Conception of Politics
- Eli Halevy, The Age of Tyranny
- Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich
- Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds.), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison
- Eric Kurlander, Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich
- Michael Mann, Fascists
- Thomas Mann's essays on the roots of Nazism in German culture
- G. L. Morse
- The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism
- The Nationalization of the Masses
- Jan-Werner Mueller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought
- Franz Neumann, Behemoth: the Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933--1944
- Ernst Nolte, Fascism in Its Epoch
- Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History
- John Orr, "German Social Theory and the Hidden Face of Technology", European Journal of Sociology 15 (1974): 312--336
- Gilbert Rozman, A Mirror for Socialism
- Giovanni Sartori, "Totalitarianism, Model Mania and Learning from Error", Journal of Theoretical Politics 5 (1993): 5-22
- Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism ["reads like a thriller"]
- Zeev Sternhell
- The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
- The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition
- Christian Stögbauer and John Komlos, "Averting the Nazi seizure of power: A Counterfactual thought experiment", European Review of Economic History 8 (2004): 173--1999
- J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy
- Arthur Versluis, The New Inquiitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism
- Weiss, The Fascist Tradition
- E. Spencer Wellhoffer, "Democracy and Fascism: Class, Civil Society, and Rational Choice in Italy", American Political Science Review 97 (2003): 91--106
- Richard Wolin, Heidegger's Children